What are their legislative accomplishments? They’re dancing around the fire of their
conservative revolution but what do they have to show for it?
The 2010 mid-terms dealt a devastating blow to
progressive politics and the wounds were all self-inflicted. While Republicans vote in EVERY ELECTION, too
many Democrats and progressives only seem interested in voting when they have
pop culture crush on a certain politician.
The result of GOP gains in 2010 meant that Republican
controlled state houses were able to gerrymander every state and federal
district so tight as to control Congress for at least 10 years and likely 20 or
even more.
What is so maddening about this is that this only
happened because progressives didn’t vote.
How do I know this? Voting
data. We can see what happens when
progressives do vote. since the turn of
the 20th Century only 3 presidents have been elected and reelected with a
majority of the popular vote: FDR,
Eisenhower and Barack Obama. Not Nixon,
not Reagan, not Clinton. In 2008,
Democrats had a substancial House majority and ended up with 60 Senate
seats. In 2012, Democrats for Congress
received >600,000 more votes for Congress than did Republicans and didn’t
retake the House.
So we know where the majority stands and we know the
lasting effects of a gerrymandered House.
Republican judges are keeping those gerrymandered
districts and rubber stamping outrageous voter suppression laws.
So this is what redistricting accomplished for the
GOP. But what has the tea party
accomplished for their right wing cause?
They can block reforms, but they can’t affirmatively push their agenda
which is why they are so frustrated.
They have prevented the passage of a new voting rights act and they have
effectively blocked any hope of any of the serious reforms to banking or heath
care or any other progressive legislation that we are hoping for.
To reverse 2010 will require very hard work and too many
progressives have zero interest in hard work, preferring insteat to sit
around complaining and imposing purity tests until some revolution does
all the hard work for them.
Well, Bernie went all in on a revolution and it didn’t
show up.
So if we want to reverse 2010, we need:
- judges who will
strike down gerrymandered districts. and voter suppression bills.
- State
constitutional amendments to block gerrymandering in favor of fairly drawn
districts following well established county, township, and municipal
boundaries. Look at what Florida has
done in this regard.
- Retake state legislatures for 2020 redistricting.
- What else?
None of this is accomplished with progressive purity
tests that sacrifice obtainable seats waiting for the revolution that isn’t
coming. To paraphrase Kevin Drum, if we
want to make a difference in this country, we need to be prepared for a very
long, very frustrating slog. We have to buy off interest groups, compromise our
ideals (Evan Bayh), and settle for half loaves—all the things that too many progressives
disdain as part of the corrupt mainstream establishment.
So what are we going to do? Commit ourselves to the ‘slow boring of hard
wood’ as Kevin Drum says? Or piss on those who fail our purity test waiting on
some revolution to solve our problems while avoiding the work of being a
responsible voter in a Democracy?
At least the Tea Party works hard.
